Given the importance the privileged classes of Shakespeare's
world placed on lineage, it would be understandable if they were anxious
about a common playwright appropriating their ancestors' lives as a
source of popular entertainment. Furthermore, given the power and
touchiness of early modern aristocrats, it would be understandable if a
playwright of the era avoided depicting patricians' progenitors.
Shakespeare, however, chose to depict the ancestors of a considerable
number of Elizabethan aristocrats, often unflatteringly, but the only
evidence we have that he got into any trouble doing so concerns the
Oldcastle-Falstaff episode. Catherine Grace Canino attempts to explain
this paradox in Shakespeare and the Nobility, an examination of the
first tetralogy, arguing that Shakespeare "consistently modified
and revised the portrayal of [aristocrats'] ancestors with the
status of their descendants in mind" (19).

Canino examines not only 1, 2, and 3 Henry VI Richard III, but also
The First Part of the Contention ... and The True Tragedie of Richard
Duke of York. She discusses the Staffords, Dukes of Buckingham; the de
la Poles and Greys, Dukes of Suffolk; the Nevilles, Dudleys, and
Westmorlands, Earls of Warwick; the Talbots, Earls of Shrewsbury; the
Cliffords, Earls of Cumberland; the Stanleys, Earls of Derby; and two
men representing "the gentry": Sir William Lucy and Sir James
Fiennes, Lord Saye. For each family, she discusses the chroniclers'
treatment of the ancestor(s) involved in the Wars of the Roses, the
behavior of the family's Elizabethan representatives, and
Shakespeare's dramatic treatment of the ancestors.

Although Canino sees Shakespeare's treatment of the
Elizabethan aristocrats' ancestors as part of a pattern, the
pattern is not one of consistent appeasement. Although she believes that
in Richard III Shakespeare enhances the character of Stanley, while
representing Buckingham as comparatively naive and innocent, and
ultimately a victim, and that in 3 Henry VI he inserts scenes that
partially redeem the appalling behavior of John, Lord Clifford, she
maintains that in other instances Shakespeare denigrates aristocratic
characters. For example, Canino suggests that Shakespeare intentionally
diminishes Lord Talbot in 1 Henry VI in order to mock his descendent the
Sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, who was having trouble with his wife. But is
it likely that Shakespeare would diminish his play's hero in order
to antagonize an aristocrat?

Furthermore, Canino arguably undercuts her argument that a concern
for descendents' opinions influenced Shakespeare's depictions
in her discussion of Suffolk, often considered the greatest villain of 1
and 2 Henry VI. Although the family had died out and the title was
extinct, so that Shakespeare had, for once, a free hand, Canino asserts
that Shakespeare extenuates Suffolk's villainy through motivating
it by love. Whether or not love serves as mitigation for this character,
family cannot have served as motivation, which raises the question of
whether the same is true for other characters.

Canino argues that "it is the noble classes that dominate
[Shakespeare's] plays" (222) and it is true that aristocrats
constitute many of the significant characters in a majority of the
plays, although it might be argued that royalty--which Canino generally
distinguishes from the nobility--dominates many of the histories and
tragedies; in fact, when she argues that childless members of the
peerage hope to be remembered on their own terms, most of her examples
are royal, including Hamlet, Cleopatra, Richard II, and Henry V. On the
other hand, it seems questionable whether Shakespeare's focus on
the nobility is due, as Canino suggests, more to the specific
circumstances of the nobility in Shakespeare's period than to the
common--not to say universal--fascination with the "lifestyles of
the rich and famous" (which Canino does acknowledge as a factor).
It does not appear necessary to assume that Shakespeare "had a
particular understanding of the historical moment that lay beneath the
aristocratic sensationalism" of the 1590s (226); he may simply have
recognized the dramatic potential in this history in which the nobles
played an important role because they were, as Canino concludes, an
essential part of Elizabethan England.

LINDA ANDERSON

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

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